Lettieri's Deal Builds Up U.S. Food-to-Go Business for Greencore

SHAKOPEE, Minn. -- As part of its strategy to focus on the food-to-go segment for convenience stores and other small-formats in the United States, Greencore Group plc has acquired Lettieri's LLC, a leading manufacturer of grab-and-go sandwiches and related food products for the U.S. c-store channel.

As reported in a 21st Century Smoke/CSP Daily News Flash, Shakopee, Minn.-based Lettieri's products are manufactured frozen but served hot via roller grills and heated cabinets. They form a primary component of the food-to-go offering in c-stores, alongside chilled food to go items such as fresh sandwiches. The product range includes assembled products (breakfast sandwiches), extruded products (stuffed baguettes and breadsticks) and enrobed products (wrap dogs) for the roller grill.

Dublin, Ireland-based Greencore is a leading international manufacturer of convenience foods and is the world's largest sandwich manufacturer. It has 23 manufacturing sites in the United Kingdom and the United States.

Greencore also said that it is investing approximately $10 million in its Jacksonville, Fla., facility in order to create the capability to manufacture frozen food-to-go products. The investment will provide capacity to support up to $100 million of revenue in products designed for hot eating at both the breakfast and lunchtime occasions.

The company anticipates that the first such products will come to market in the final quarter of 2014, it said.

"We have been working since 2011 to build a focused, growing, food-to-go business in the U.S.," said Patrick Coveney, CEO of Greencore. "Today's announcement represents an important further step on that journey. Both the Lettieri's acquisition and the capital investment into Jacksonville deepen our manufacturing capability and widen our product range to more fully serve the food-to-go needs of our customers in the small-store channels. Both investments are consistent with our long-term approach of developing high-quality manufacturing facilities to meet the specific growth strategies of our key U.S. customers."

Since 2003 CSP magazine has ranked No. 1 in readership and market share over all other industry publications. C-store marketers have identified CSP as the preferred magazine source for their trade marketing communications. With industry-leading, highly targeted circulation to more than 100,000 subscribers, CSP reaches the key convenience retailing decision-makers fifteen times a year.